Deployment Scenarios and Architecture

This Quick Start provides separate AWS CloudFormation templates to support three
deployment scenarios.
For each scenario, you also have the option to create a new VPC or use your existing
VPC infrastructure. Choose the scenario that best fits your needs.

Scenario 1: Deploy and manage your own AD DS installation on the Amazon EC2 instances.
The AWS CloudFormation template for this scenario builds the AWS Cloud infrastructure,
and sets up and configures AD DS and AD-integrated DNS on the AWS Cloud.
It doesn’t include AWS Directory Service, so you handle all AD DS maintenance and
monitoring tasks yourself.
You can also choose to deploy the Quick Start into your existing VPC infrastructure.

Scenario 2: Extend your on-premises AD DS to AWS on Amazon EC2 instances.
The AWS CloudFormation template for this scenario builds the base AWS Cloud infrastructure
for AD DS, and you perform several manual steps to extend your
existing network to AWS and to promote your domain controllers. As in scenario
1, you manage all AD DS tasks yourself.
You can also choose to deploy the Quick Start into your existing VPC infrastructure.

Scenario 3: Deploy AD DS with AWS Directory Service on the AWS Cloud.
The AWS CloudFormation template for this scenario builds the base AWS Cloud infrastructure,
and deploys AWS Directory Service for Microsoft AD, which offers managed AD DS functionality
on the AWS Cloud.
AWS Directory Service takes care of AD DS tasks such as building a highly available
directory topology, monitoring domain controllers, and configuring backups and snapshots.
As with the first two scenarios, you can choose to deploy the Quick Start into
an existing VPC infrastructure.

The following sections discuss the Quick Start architecture for each scenario, and
explain the automation provided by the Quick Start template.

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